White House warns of future job losses

Despite "positive" news that the rate of unemployment slowed in July, the White House on Friday warned that more job losses are still expected.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the president is "pleased" that unemployment dipped to 9.4 percent, but that the administration is still only seeing signs that the economy is stabilizing and still expects unemployment to reach 10 percent this year.

"I think it's going to be a long time before we see genuine, sustained, positive job growth," Gibbs told reporters in his West Wing office.

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Republicans on Friday blasted the Obama administration's stimulus efforts, noting that even though the rate dropped, there were almost 250,000 jobs lost.

"The president said his stimulus bill would keep unemployment from rising higher than 8 percent. It hasn’t," said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "Now he expects Americans to believe his trillion-dollar healthcare experiment will improve their healthcare? It won’t. America simply can’t afford more of the president’s costly experiments.”

But Gibbs said there is "no doubt that the Recovery Act has and is making a difference."

"We're moving in the right direction, but we still have more work to do," Gibbs said.

Gibbs hailed "the least bad jobs report we've had in a year" as "more evidence that we have pulled back from the edge and away from the brink of a depression."